LinkedIn is more than an online CV, if you work in any line of B2B activities – you need to be all over LinkedIn like a bad rash! LinkedIn B2B insurance marketing provides companies with practically a limitless number of lead opportunities – especially those with niche business insurance schemes.
But where do you start?
In this piece we will look at three basic elements of LinkedIn you can use without upgrading to a paid account. Those are:
- Groups
- Content / Articles
- LinkedIn Search
While there are a lot more things you can do with LinkedIn, we need to walk before we run. Let’s take a quick look at each in turn…
Groups
Groups are basically small communities build around a topic or theme that use LinkedIn to host and manage the group functionality. If you have any kind of business insurance offering, you can use and find groups of relevant targeted people. While you may feel your insurance offer is suitable for all, the best way we have found to get any kind of traction on LinkedIn is to find niches or groups. You can target them with interaction (answering relevant posts) and posting relevant content, which you can share in their group once you become a member.
Free LinkedIn membership gives each individual access to 50 groups. Some of these groups can have 300,000 members – and all potentially relevant. Make sure you are maximising the number of relevant groups you belong to. If you have a number of staff, why not assign different niches to different staff? In this way, you can divide and conquer – and widen the effectiveness of your LinkedIn activity.
You can also set up a number of your own groups and get people to signup with your groups too! This does take a bit more effort but could be a strategy for the longer term to add value to your markets.
Content
LinkedIn articles is LinkedIn’s self publishing platform. This means you can post content directly onto LinkedIn and tag it. Basically it is like a blog but run on LinkedIn. This then gets added to the site and will be available to view by everyone in your network – they can comment, share and like your content.
This is a great way to show your expertise in a given field.
Once written and published, you can then share the content in any relevant groups. Make sure all the content you put out on LinkedIn posts and articles are relevant to your ideal client avatar. In this way, your content is speaking directly to the right person and they will get in touch with you. No cold calling or emailing here. It also means over time, LinkedIn nows what you are about and helps then share the relevant content with relevant people.
LinkedIn Search
One thing that is overlooked by a lot of people is actually the LinkedIn Search facility. While lots of us use search Google to find information, when looking for company information, finding companies or people within companies, LinkedIn is by far the best way to do this. In fact, even most Google searches around finding business contacts tend to show LinkedIn results.
So how can you use it? Here’s an idea. Why not create a wish list of the top 50 companies you wish to work with or connect with. Why not search for their company on LinkedIn to see if they have a company page – if they do have one, there will be a follow button – click it. Now you will get all the updates that company puts out on LinkedIn.
Next, why not do an employee search on that company name? Now you will see details of all the employees that have a LinkedIn profile that work at that company. You can refine the list, so if you need to find someone in marketing or finance, or a director, you can.
Can you see how powerful this is? With a bit of time and effort you can construct a good list of relevant people to try and outreach to.
Summary
I hear a lot of people struggling with LinkedIn B2B insurance marketing and how to find the right people they need to. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to help you find what you need and what’s more, it only takes some time and effort to figure out how to use it to your advantage.
These are only three basic tips to use LinkedIn, there are a huge more number of ways to drive leads and sales direct from LinkedIn. But get these strategies and techniques under your belt first. These are a great place to start.
